Remember Me Fondly
by alienesque
Summary: Superhero AU. In which Arnold Judas Rimmer, aka The Aceman, learns that all his heroic failings lose him little love where it counts. Lister/Rimmer


**A/N:** Hello! Just a little one-shot I wrote some time ago for someone whose name escapes me at the moment. Enjoy!

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**Remember Me Fondly**

_Citizens of Earth called him the Aceman, because, and let us all be incredibly truthful here, there's a considerable amount of highs and lows as supreme superhero and de facto representative of the human race, tremendous responsibilities and decisions that go with the patent of having to save the world on a daily basis. For every good deed done one must sacrifice himself to a necessary evil, even if that evil is something as silly as, say, shoving some old hag from Manchester—who put herself between safety and certain death by disintegration of a laser-cannon firing hybrid bazookoid that got nicked off a mining vessel before its first flight, mind you, because a certain charismatic superhero might have, possibly, hypothetically even, accidently let access to its cargo bay holdings because he might have, quite possibly, in all theoretical possibility that is, pressed the egregiously indistinguishable but, ultimately, incorrect button, in an attempt to summon that refreshment officer with the big, I mean, generous attributes that had absolutely positively given him that I'm a big fan, over-the-shoulder come-hither wink—anyway, into the white lights of a double-decker. Still, and I digress—_

"What ya doin'?"

Arnold Judas Rimmer, as was his unfortunate name by birth, jumped with a start, but not really, in fact, quickly deeming himself too refined, too vigilant for such a visceral reaction. Instead, he hastily busied himself with plastering his hands on top a few flimsy pieces of paper, but it was too late. His fellow superhero and mutually reluctant companion David Lister, aka Mister Everyman, had seen the fruit of his labor, having been hovering over the other man's left shoulder for a time that had gone unnoticed by said Aceman.

"You're writin' away like a fiend! No digital relay? All fingers and thumbs—writing hate mail to Superhero International again? I keep tellin' ya that's no way to get the league's attention..."

Rimmer scowled, busying himself still. Only he'd given up on hiding the pages of towering stacks of papers of every which he had every intention of writing upon. He swiveled on his swivel chair, turning on the other man still leaning over him, scowling up even harder at Lister's stupidly gerbil face of a puffed up cheeky grin.

"Ooh, some serious stuff I bet."

"I'm writing my eulogy," Rimmer shot back, "if you simply must know."

"Your eulogy?" Lister stepped back, careful to swipe away the trail of his black leather cape. "What for?"

"Because I want to!"

"Why?"

"Because when I die I want assurance that I'm remembered properly."

"You wha'?"

"You heard," Rimmer grumbled, swiveling back around. He didn't return to his writings, however, deciding to stew instead, shoulders hunching forward in a wordless sulk for having been caught doing something so personal in his personal time of personal angst and by none other than the one other superhero that knew him quite personally and could easily have a little laugh about his choice in priorities.

"Rimmer, no one writes their own smeggin' eulogy."

"Well, I do!" Rimmer snapped, glaring at the round table beneath him. "We're superheroes, after all. We're always just one attack or indeterminately brought on heart attack away from the biggest sleep yet, milado."

"You've absolutely cracked, haven't yeh?"

"You just now realizing that, brimstone breath?" jeered an infamously hip voice from across the gathering hall of HQ. Rimmer and Lister turned to watch as their felineus teammate sauntered into the room, followed by a more awkward stepping teammate who ambled behind in a series of robotic-like jerks and clicking noises. They approached the roundtable, the place of many a paramount meetings about great issues of importance, such as what they should call themselves: The Intergalactic Team of Superheroes (or TITS, for short) or The World Affiliated Team of Superheroes (or TWATS, to which, at which point, Rimmer had begrudgingly admitted that there definitely seemed to be a rather unfortunate pattern to their naming efforts). "Hey, you're not as smart as I doubted you were!"

"Yeah, yeah," Lister grumbled testily, leaning up against the back of Rimmer's chair, "and you, Catman."

"Sirs," said the voice of a former service android turned cyborg-slash-alien hybrid and other fellow teammate, known to close acquaintances such as themselves by the issued name Kryten, butting in quite politely, twisting around in thinly veiled excitement. "May I ask what all this papers are for, scattered about in such an appetizing mess?"

"It's nothing, Captain Chloroform, thank you very much. Now go away."

"Aceman here's writin' his eulogy," Lister answered for Rimmer, smiling brilliantly where Rimmer frowned, "writin' his own smeggin' eulogy, like he's planning to drop dead at any moment."

"What for?" asked Catman, aka the Cat to them.  
"Never mind what for! Leave me alone, why don't you."

"He figures that, should he die tomorrah, no one in the whole of the universe will give his utterly fantastic life any justice."

"What's the point in that?" The Cat laughed in loud hisses and rhythmic snorts, biting his tongue between fanged teeth, and Rimmer felt the reassuring hands of another, familiar hands, Lister's hands, hold him firmly by the shoulders. "He hasn't done anything worth remembering."

"Ay, ay, and you have?"

"Well, I haven't made things worse."

"I'm afraid it's true, Mr Lister, I-I mean, Mister Everyman, sir." Rimmer watched, out the corner of his eye, as Kryten sidled forward, his mechanical being inching ever so close to the tabletop of clutter he so desperately wanted to tidy. "Statistically speaking, the superhero known as the Aceman has inadvertently caused or exacerbated more global disasters and acts of terror than he has solved."

"Remember the Prime Minister he mistook for the leader of the planet stealers on Spacestation 614? He shoved him in a waste pod and ejected him into the Monoceros constellation!"

"And let us not forget that accidental missile launch from planet Omicron to Delmar, Delaware, USA."

"Just last week he pushed some old lady into oncoming traffic! Everyone saw that transit bus punt her in the air like a football! It was incredible..."

"Alright! Alright! I think he gets the point!" Lister griped, gripping him firmly still, but Rimmer had already tuned the others out, the noise of his own failings a far more deafening sound. "I don't believe yeh, you two, I really don't."

Rimmer heard it in the other man's tone, a sense of indignity, amazement, for his sake, that his own teammates would think so little of him, surely...surely. When the Aceman looked up at the man standing at his side, he saw disappointment where there usually was none, a concern resting where there normally lay careless joy in his eyes.

"I'd expect such crassness from Catman but not you, Captain Chloroform."

"Oh, sirs!" Kryten's face contorted into rubbery regret. "I-I do apologize...I'm just so eager to show off my prowess in data analysis. I'll just go knock myself out for a while and think about the pain I've inflicted while unconscious," Kryten lamented, raising his arms to reveal the built-in chloroform dispensers he usually treated to baddies in need of a temporary knock-out.

"I'll stand by and watch," said the cat, with a Cheshire grin, crossing his hands pleasantly before him, and not an iota of accountability evident about him. "It's sure to be loads of fun to watch."

"Come off it now," Lister chastised, waving them off. "Meetin's cancelled for today. Smeg off both of ya." He let go of Rimmer and stepped away from his chair, choosing a swiveling chair of his own to pull up beside him, collecting first and second and third draft papers into piles where Kryten hadn't yet gotten the chance to. "I wanna 'ave a chat with the Aceman..._alone_." They didn't dilly or dally, the Cat and Kryten, not when it came to Mister Everyman. They listened to him, Rimmer knew, respected him, so when he told them to leave they went.

It was just Rimmer and Lister, now, in an echoing chamber hall, all pure white walls and smooth tile floors of justice. Rimmer watched Lister gather up all the dreadful beginnings for his dreadful ending, every now and again chuckling appreciatively, eyes scanning his every sordid word with a fondness Rimmer often believed he didn't deserve.

"I'm no English scholar, or anythin', but," Lister pinched apart one page from one stack and held it up for emphasis, revealing to Rimmer distant scribbles of his own words, "you might want to invest in a book on grammar."

"Smeg off, you git."

"Hey, I'm on your side! Granted, I'm a bit miffed. You get me? Why ya writin' your own eulogy? I mean, why now? You think you're dead soon, is that it?"

"They're right, you know, Kryten and the Cat?" Rimmer uninterrupted, meeting Lister's dark brown eyes of warmth and general merriment dead-on with his own eyes of beady swamp green. "I've done more harm than good, haven't I? I can't do a single thing right—that's why the league won't take me. And they won't take you lot either, so long as I'm dragging everyone down."

"Rimmer, cut the crap. Since when did anythin' those two say ever bothah you before? If anything, ya'r wrong for going off on your own all the time without an ear in on us. That's why Catman will say anything teh set ya off."

"Ugh," Rimmer grimaced, eyes trailing miserably across his own tabletop trail of destruction. "Maybe you're right."

"I know I'm right, you dunce!" Lister exclaimed, in determined earnest, pulling up closer to splay his hands against Rimmer's knees, scrunching up the fabric of his black and red superhero suit as he rubbed his hands up and down the length of the other's thighs in soothing encouragement. "Half the smeggin' fanmail we get in this place is for ya, people goin' on and on and on about how grateful they are and how they'd do anythin' to show you their generosity. Don't even get me started on the personal recordin's…"

"I get fanmail?" Rimmer's face lit up but quickly fell, the idea nonsensical and the possibility that Lister was just trying to cheer him up all the more probable. "Is this a wind-up?"

"I'm tellin' ya the honest to god's truth, Rimmsey." Lister swiped a hand across his cheek, adding, "Maybe you are as thick as you seem to think you are, if you can't even see how much everyone loves ya."

"Then how come I've never seen any of it, the fanmail, I mean?"

"Don't get mad, alright?" Lister pleaded, sheepishly, dragging a guilty hand down the nape of his neck. "I've been keepin' 'em from ya."

"What? Why?"

"Well you're already so full of yourself; I thought the encouragement might make your head explode."

"You have GOT to be joking-"

"Come 'ere..." Lister beckoned him forward with a wry grin, rewarding Rimmer with the press of his lips against his own. They came close, as close as two could get while both sitting, until their knees overlapped and their hands held onto the armrests of each other's swivel chairs.

"Mm..." Rimmer let his hands wander up to cup that still impossibly grinning face, deepening the kiss, of lips enveloping lips, until the pleasured moan to escape him allowed for Lister's tongue to delve into his mouth, dominating their pleasantly slow snog as Lister's hands found purchase against Rimmer's waist. He felt good, felt himself warming, as if everything, including his own sad existence, was okay, even if he knew nothing was, because that was Mister Everyone's greatest strength, and it was Rimmer's for the having.

Lister made him good.

"I'd never let anyone do ya a disservice," Lister whispered between their parted lips, and Rimmer closed his eyes to the sensation. "If anyone's gonna remember how unbelievably amazing you are, it'll be me."

"You mean it?"

"Oh yeah," Lister smiled against him, pressing their foreheads close. "You bet. When you wind up on the lethal end of a villain's madness, you'll be remembered for all the good you've done, and the bad can smeg off."

"A connoisseur of words, you are," Rimmer muttered, rolling his eyes but reluctantly smiling all the same.

"Betta than you! Now come on, then," with one last press of lips, a chaste kiss, Lister pulled away, grinning cheekily still. "Let's go read your ridiculous fanmail."

They stood together, and Lister worked quick to wrap his arms around Rimmer, steering the taller man toward their sleeping quarters.

"Some of it is chockfull of good ideas," Lister groaned wantonly against him, his hands slipping south ever so slightly.

"Is it?"

"Oh smeg yes."

"Well, we wouldn't want their efforts to go to waste." Rimmer stepped a little lighter, considerably faster, his earlier preoccupation left for a certain former service mechanoid to do away with, himself now growing red with slight embarrassment and eager anticipation. "Let's get on with it!"

"Aftah you, Ace."

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R&R, please. ^^


End file.
